


Say Uncle

by Higgystar



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme, Team Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2012724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgystar/pseuds/Higgystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from the kink meme: Whilst in the train car Tara asks Carl about the people he showed up with. He is more than happy to explain their positions in his life and begins to refer to Daryl as his uncle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say Uncle

Carl can’t sleep. The train car is cold in the dead of the night, everyone is curled up into as small a ball as possible to keep themselves warm and yet he can’t get any sleep. Over the last year he’s learnt how to sleep anywhere, the exhaustion of their life means he’s gotten used to catching a nap or a few hours when he could yet here he was far too on edge to sleep. He doesn’t know if it’s because of what had happened before on the road with those guys running through his mind, or maybe the vision of what his dad had done for him is staining the back of his eyelids and keeping him awake. Either way he’s awake and in the darkness of the train car he thinks he’s the only one for a while.

Then he hears the quiet snuffling of someone definitely not asleep and he’s alert, sitting up straighter, letting his leg remain pressed against Michonne’s to keep her unsettled but scanning the darkness for any movement. It’s no one he knows, it’s one of the new ones, the girl that wasn’t in the army gear and she doesn’t look comfortable. He doesn’t know her, but she’d helped them, she had helped their family and that was enough for him to trust her and to want her feeling comfortable.

“Hey?” He calls into the darkness, his voice hushed but his dad still shifts beside him, a hand reaching out enough to brush against his side in his sleep. Carl doesn’t reach back, but he doesn’t pull away either. Instead he focuses on the noise and the sudden silence that follows his voice. “Are you okay?”

There’s some fidgeting and huffing about in the train car, the shadows shifting a little and before long she is sitting up and shuffling a little closer with a  grumble. “Yeah, just can’t sleep.” She mutters, her voice staying low, not wanting to disturb anyone else that’s actually managed to fall asleep. She moves closer, climbing around the sleeping bodies until she’s a few feet from him and even if it’s dark he can almost feel the grateful smile on her face. “I’m Tara.”

“Carl.” He smiles, glad to be talking to someone and to have something to take his mind off of everything that’s swirling around his head. Nodding to the sleeping forms around him he points out the family members that she doesn’t know, pointing to them in their proximity to him. “That’s my dad. That’s Michonne.” Pointing over the two of them to the corner he gestures to where the last member is curled up around himself. “And that’s Daryl. Are those army people your friends?” he asks and Tara almost laughs out loud until she remembers where they are.

“No I…I don’t really know anyone.” Stifling herself she gives a shrug and now their eyes have adjusted to the dimness he can see that she looks kind of nervous and fidgety. “I met Glenn…on the road and down the way met up with everyone else later. I don’t really know anyone here, I’m on my own.” The realisation makes her pause for a moment and he feels bad for her, not wanting her to feel that way when he knows what it feels like to be truly alone. Images of his father’s rattling breaths and slow crawl towards him makes him shudder and he focuses on her words more intently. “I’m not very good at getting to know people.”

Carl remembers walking down the road and asking his dad what they would say. He remembers trying to get his head around the idea of trying to explain his short life to new people and trying to justify every single move they’ve had to make to survive this world. He takes pity on Tara and wants to ease her worries as much as possible, and maybe he wants to ease his own troubles in the process. “My dad is a good man.” He starts off with and he can see that Tara latches on to the conversation, ready to get to know these people without the awkward questions. “He tries real hard to look after me, he does the tough jobs that no one else wants to do and sometimes…sometimes it’s hard for him. But we’re still alive because of him, he got us this far, and I know he’d do anything to keep us all safe.”

He knows that he’s speaking the truth and he remembers too much. Shane. The attack on the tracks. The Governor. The farm. The amount of times his dad has been near death and fought it off because he had other people to think about. Sometimes it felt as if his dad didn’t have time to die, he’s always too busy trying to save everyone and trying to make the best choices. Sure there are some he doesn’t understand but thinking of the past doesn’t help and right now they have to keep looking to the future because he knew if he remembered the bad times then he’d never managed to scrape his way back to the here and now. They’d gotten this far, they deserved to be alive.

“He sounds pretty badass.” Tara tells him and he has to nod and agree.

“He is.” Because despite it all he knows that his dad is dangerous, but he knows that he’s dangerous to the right people. They think he doesn’t know what they’re thinking. They think he’s too young to get it but he does. “We lost him for a while before everything happened, he got shot, he was a cop and he was in a coma for a while, but even after everything that happened he woke up. He woke up and even with all the walkers and the danger he came and he found me and my mom.” And he remembers just how much he loved his dad in that moment when he’d shown up alive and well. “He fought so hard for us, and even though my mom is gone, and we lost my baby sister, he’s still here and he’s still fighting. I know he’s worried about me, but I’ve learnt a lot from him, the good and the bad.” How to control the monster within and how to let it out when the time was right. “It’s tough but we’re still here and we’re here because of him.”

Tara is watching him through the darkness, her head tilted to the side but he can see that she is smiling. She hasn’t been through what they have, she has barely seen this world and what it can do to people, but she’s going to learn and if they had anything to do with it she would survive.

“I hope he goes through with his threat from before.” She mumbles and he has to nod and agree, looking over to where his father sleeps and knowing that even in his sleep he’s planning their escape. “He sounds like the kind of guy that’s going to get us out of here.”

“He will.” And there’s no question in his mind that this is not the end for them. He can’t see an end for them, all he sees is a future and that’s the way it needs to be. “I know he won’t stop until he does.”

She can hear his determination, she can tell he’s being honest and he hopes that that eases a little bit of the anxiety she’s feeling. He wants to help her as much as he can and if she was going to be with them then she had to trust them. “Okay what about Michonne?” Tara asks, and he smiles at her next question. “What’s she like? How come they call her samurai?”

“She has a sword, a katana she carries around.” He smirks at the mental image that conjures up and how he’d spent a good portion of the time watching her at first and imagining her as one of his comic book heroes. “She’s hardcore. Before she found us she was on her own for a long time, using walkers to carry her stuff and keeping herself safe by keeping away from people.” She’d been so quiet, so alone and ready to bolt every day. “It took a while but she’s one of us, through and through. She made it easier to carry on, to fight through everything that’s happened to us and I know its taken time but she’s a part of our family now.” He concludes and he can feel Tara give a nod of understanding. Maybe she’s hoping to join that family and to make her way into their lives.

“And the archer?” She asks and he can hear how much calmer she’s feeling.

Glancing over to the corner he can see the hitch in Daryl’s breathing and how the injuries from before stop him from being completely comfortable. He remembers seeing the other man from the car and how despite the gun pressed to his dad’s head, he knew that Daryl wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Daryl had that way about him, a calming presence that he’d never thought could come from the loud-mouthed redneck he’d met at the quarry camp. “Daryl is…” He doesn’t know how to put it all into words. Daryl was his dad’s right hand man, he was reliable, he was loyal, he was broken in so many different way and yet he never let that stop him from being a badass and keeping them all safe. “He’s…”

“An archer clearly.” Tara buts in, clearly trying to urge him forward with his explanation and not wanting him to get caught on his words.

“Yeah, he’s got a badass crossbow he uses.” He agrees, noting the way Daryl curls in on himself a little tighter with a mumble. “Before all of this he was a hunter, and then when the walkers came he knew how to survive. If it weren’t for him we’d all be dead and have starved ages ago.” He remembers practically idolising the other man before, wanting to ride his bike, stealing his gun, and trying to use his crossbow before he had the strength for it. Now he still wanted to be like him, but not as much as he wanted to be like his dad. It was weird, but in a way Daryl had become his friend, his father’s confidant and the person they all needed beside them to get them through this.

“Sounds like he means a lot to you.”

“Yeah he does. Daryl’s…he’s family.” He nods and he means it. Really means it. Sure he wasn’t his mom, he wasn’t his brother or anything but he was something and he deserved more than just to be lumped in with everyone else. Daryl had been there since the beginning, and he’d grown into his place, found exactly where he needed to be and that was beside his dad. He’d heard them outside of the car, he’d heard the words his dad had shared with Daryl and he knows how much it meant to the both of them. Brother. It was Shane. It was Merle. It was the empty spaces in their lives filled by the other and it meant something to him as well. “He’s my uncle.”

“Your uncle?”

“Maybe not in blood but yeah.” There had been a kid at school, Suzie Harris and she’d lived with her uncle and aunt. Only she’d had to keep reminding everyone that they weren’t her real aunt and uncle, but her godparents that she called that. There had been no blood relation there, but there had been a connection, something more, familiar and real. He thought it was probably the closest thing to what Daryl was to him. “He’s my uncle, my dad’s brother and someone we both need in our lives.”

Because he remembers when Daryl had left with Merle and he remembers when he’d come back. He remembers the anger he’d felt, the relief and the utter sense of betrayal lifting when he’d run up and shoved the other man, hitting at his side and calling him a jerk for leaving. Then he remembers thanking him for coming back, begging him not to leave again and threatening to steal his crossbow if he thought about it. Daryl was more than just a member of their group, he was family. He was closer family than some of the others and he remembers handing newborn Judith over to him and there hadn’t been a doubt in his mind that it was the best place for her to be. Daryl was safe, Daryl was home, and Daryl was family just as much as his dad was.

“He’s my uncle.” He repeats, maybe for Tara, maybe for himself, but it doesn’t matter.

“Thank you.” Tara nods to him, and he notes that she goes to settle to sleep where she was, not moving back to her previous spot. Already she’s closer to them and not so scared of them. He’s glad, he doesn’t want anyone afraid of them unless they’re the enemy. “I feel better now Carl. You’d better get some sleep.” She coaxes him and he nods in agreement, turning to check over his sleeping family before shuffling away from Michonne. She stirs but doesn’t wake and he’s grateful for that.

Moving between his father and Daryl he curls onto his side, setting his hat aside to bury his head in his arms. Beside him Daryl stirs, mumbling something to himself and Carl can see one bleary eye open to peer at him through the darkness. Daryl gives a small grunt of question and Carl just knows that if he said he had a problem the man would be up and ready to help in an instant. Shrugging a little he buries himself further into his arms. “Can’t sleep.” He mumbles and almost before he’s finished speaking Daryl is sitting up, shrugging out of his vest and tossing it over Carl. It’s not much, it barely does anything to keep out the chill in the air, but it’s exactly why he feels comfortable calling Daryl his uncle.

It just felt right.


End file.
